China's richest are packing up and moving out

[Dysfunctional Cunt]

This century's going to be more interesting than I thought.

I have been saying this for years.

Horrorology is the new anthropology.

NEWSFEED!!

[Placid Dingo]

There are 19,612,368 people in Beijing.  What do you suppose will happen when Beijing can no longer be reliably supplied with food due to the loss of roads, etc?  Especially given that the problem is hardly restricted to the capitol itself?

Civil war, I imagine.

No, I rather imagine they will attempt to invade their neighbors.

I get the impression a culture of national pride pushes this to be less likely.

If you eat someone elses country, you look like you need them.

[Doktor Howl]

There are 19,612,368 people in Beijing.  What do you suppose will happen when Beijing can no longer be reliably supplied with food due to the loss of roads, etc?  Especially given that the problem is hardly restricted to the capitol itself?

Civil war, I imagine.

No, I rather imagine they will attempt to invade their neighbors.

I get the impression a culture of national pride pushes this to be less likely.

If you eat someone elses country, you look like you need them.

If your population is going to have to eat sand, you'll fucking do it anyway.

[Placid Dingo]

There are 19,612,368 people in Beijing.  What do you suppose will happen when Beijing can no longer be reliably supplied with food due to the loss of roads, etc?  Especially given that the problem is hardly restricted to the capitol itself?

Civil war, I imagine.

No, I rather imagine they will attempt to invade their neighbors.

I get the impression a culture of national pride pushes this to be less likely.

If you eat someone elses country, you look like you need them.

If your population is going to have to eat sand, you'll fucking do it anyway.

Well yeah. Just not plan A.

[Cardinal Pizza Deliverance.]

Yeeeep. This is gonna get mighty interesting.

[Cain]

Looks like the Chinese government is trying a push back to maintain environmental integrity, but it is being hampered by obstructionist regional bureaucrats and similar types, who are used to being able to do whatever the fuck they want, as the Emperor is far away.

Hence the explosion in Chinese protests against corrupt officials this summer.  Mass Group Incidents, as the security services call them.  Sometimes, though not always, instigated on behalf on the CCP to put pressure from below as well as above on reluctant backsliders.  On top of China's reluctance to get involved in the coal mergers and acquisitions last year, this signals a change in policy at the top of the government in regards to energy and environmental issues.  I wouldn't count them out just yet.

Most of these people leaving, incidentally, are connected to those corrupt officials, I am reliably informed by devoted Chinese politics watchers.  That they've only fled with 800 billion yuan between them is the most surprising part.

[Jenne]

See, this is a good, defining moment in China's "political evolution."  The exposure and and rooting out of the corruption will bring them closer and closer to the level of "Westernized" or 1st world society the Chinese powers that be desire. 

Very interesting.

[Triple Zero]

I googled around for a bit trying to find information on Beijing's desertification that is not based on that one "Beijing Desert Storm" article, which is over 10 years old, but quoted and cited everywhere.

As it says, they are trying, with a project dubbed "China's Great Green Wall", but apparently they're going the wrong way about it, planting monocultures of trees in all the wrong places, and it's not doing much and sometimes even making the problem worse.

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/20291/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/11/china-forests-deforestation

But I wondered, if it's not working, are they keeping it up?

The most recent news, says that there is some progress being made, things have been going a bit better in the second half of the past decade. But only a tiny bit. And that it will take 300 years to make a recovery.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/04/china-desertification

"China makes gain in battle against desertification but has long fight ahead. Expert warns it could take 300 years to recover desert land resulting from over-cultivation and water demands"

"There were small signs of improvement. In the five years to 2010, the authors estimated the area of desert had shrunk by an annual average of 1,717 square kilometres. This was 40% better than the results from 2000-05, the first in China's history to ever show a gain."

So, yeah. Still not very good.

[Rumckle]

Perhaps some are trying to get out before the authorities catch up with them?

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/accidentally-released-report-reveals-embarrassing-extent-of-chinese-corruption/story-e6frg6so-1226076938605

MORE than 10,000 corrupt Chinese officials collectively took $120 billion out of the country in a 15-year spree of embezzlement, bribes and defections, with some of the money ending up in Australia.

The revelations, laid bare in a report by the People's Bank of China that was never intended to be released to the public, shine an embarrassing spotlight on Chinese corruption; a problem seen by some as an Achilles' heel for the world's second-largest economy.

The report appears to have been mistakenly uploaded to an official website after winning a prize for the quality of its research.

....

The research, whose revelations of corruption are breathtaking even by Chinese standards, estimates that between 16,000 and 18,000 officials may have fled the country with monumental hoards of ill-gotten money between the mid-1990s and 2008.

In one paragraph, the report, which had the words "internal data, store carefully" on the front page, cautioned that unchecked corruption was putting communist rule at risk. "It is a direct threat to the cleanpolitics structure of the Communist Party and harms the foundations of its power," it said.